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Breaking News is a current events news-reader designed in an intriguing way. You can type in whatever topic you want to read about - soccer, major news, refugees - and you're provided with a list of headlines to stories about it. Clicking on the headlines will take you to the story. But the real interesting part of the site is that if you click on a globe icon on the upper right of the page, you'll go to a world map showing you the location of the where the stories are originating. Clicking on the dots will also take you to the story.

Rand McNally launched a free online tool for students and teachers to learn more about the presidential election process. "An accompanying online teacher resource center includes lesson plans based on the Common Core Standards making it easy to integrate the games and activities into the classroom.   Features of "Play the Election" Digital Learning Game * Interactive electoral map - Breaks down the Electoral College by state, details past election results, real-time polling data, election-related headlines, and more. * Digital Mini-Games - Students can choose from eleven different mini-games that reinforce key concepts of the election, delve deeper into the issues of influential and battleground states, and tie core civics curriculum to current events. * Standards-aligned lesson plans - Professionally-created lesson plans for educators that cover key aspects of the 2012 Election, the Electoral College, and major debates. * Student Access - Each student creates their own unique profile that allows them to save and edit their own electoral map, play and track their progress through the games, and see how their answers stack up against those of others in their class or the country. * Create Your Own Games - Teachers can create their own mini-games to reinforce key concepts or to teach new, related events. "Play the Election" was created in collaboration with ImpactGames and is powered by ImpactGames' Knight News Game award winning platform."

Might be an interesting formative for students and teachers for how current students are with the world... especially after having a week of fall break.

Daily news in a student-centered format

"In 1954, the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education declared segregated schools unconstitutional and sparkeda decade of groundbreaking civil rights activism and legislation.Using archival news footage, primary sources, and interview segments filmed for Eyes on the Prize, this collection captures the voices,images, and events of the Civil Rights movement and the ongoing struggle for racial equality in America. "

Current events for students

Think "fantasy football for social studies and literacy standards". It's a social learning game that follows countries and world leaders as they compete for news headlines. Teachers sign up, have a draft in class, and use scores and resources however they want. Students draft teams of countries, become more aware, and automatically score points every time their countries are mentioned in the NY Times. FGP engages students in the study of how politics, geography, humans, economics, and foreign policy interact.

An 85 page document that is a "road map" to one state's social studies curriculum. The 7th and 8th grade sections might make a good starting point for Arizona's standards, if they could bear to change what they have now.

Scope & Sequence for Social Studies Curriculum with essential questions (Common Core)

Using Current Events for PBL

Using Current Events for Learning. Let me know if you want to bounce ideas around for how to do this in your classrooms.